Sunday, September 14, 2014

Part One: Something Worse Than Cancer

On Saturday February 27, 2010 I finished my first round of
chemotherapy. By the end I was pretty tired, but overall it went well and I only
got sick once.

In the week that followed I had the worst insomnia. There
wasn't a night all week that I got more than two hours of sleep in a row.

The night of Saturday, March 6th was different. I couldn't
sleep, but I also could not get comfortable because of a cramping feeling in my
left calf. I went downstairs early the next morning because I couldn't sleep. I
wrote a caringbridge post, watched TV, and waited for the painful cramp to go
away. By late morning, I was asking my dad to get the crutches from the garage
because it hurt too much to put weight on my leg.

We called the hospital and they said we should come to the
emergency room right away. Dad carried me to the car, then he, mom and I drove to
Children's. I remember sitting in the backseat gritting my teeth trying not to
cry out as the pain got worse and worse.

When we got to the hospital my
dad carried me is inside. They took me straight back to a room. (One of the
perks of having cancer is that you get a fast pass through ER.)

The pain was unbearable. I was asked
what my pain level was from 1 to 10. I said 10, but it was probably more like a
13. I tried to hold it back, but every once in a while a scream broke through
my gritted teeth. The doctors tried IV dilaudid (my usual pain medication) and
it barely took the edge off. They tried it a second time with the same result.
No one knew why my leg was in so much pain, which made it harder to treat.
Eventually, after what seemed like hours, I was moved to the inpatient cancer
floor. My mom went home to get us some things to spend the night.

For the next hour, my dad held me
as I screamed in pain while we waited for the pain team to arrive. When they
finally came, I think I straight up asked for morphine. Once they hooked me up
to the morphine pump and gave me some other meds to relax, I finally felt
relief.

My leg after the first surgery.

By the morning my leg had swollen
up to the size of a grapefruit. The oncology fellow decided to call in
surgical. After being seen by general and orthopedic surgical residents and
fellows and attendings, the head of general surgery, Dr. Waldhausen, walked in
the room. He made the final decision to take me to surgery immediately.

During the exploratory surgery,
the doctors found that tissue in my leg was infected by necrotizing fasciitis,
a deadly flesh eating bacteria. They removed as much infected tissue as they
could in a process called, debrieding. Over the next several days I went back
to the operating room several times for debridement and dressing changes. When
not in the operating room I was in ICU hooked up to a rigorous course of
antibiotics, bags of blood products (red blood cells, platelets and
granulocytes) and morphine.

In the ICU - Check out that IV pole

By the end of the week it looked
like the infection was clearing up and there were plans to close the incision.
Friday night I started to feel hardness and swelling in my left thigh that was
also very red. Another exploratory surgery found that the infection had spread
to my thigh. The spread of the infection meant more operations to remove the
infected tissue.

After 11 days in the ICU I
was moved to room 3009, a.k.a. the "Sammy Loch Suite", where my mom
and I would spend the next 30 days.

All told I was inpatient for 41
days, had 10 surgical operations including a skin graft, had countless blood
product transfusions, a rigorous course of antibiotics, and finished my second
round of chemotherapy.

During this time, I experienced boredom
and restlessness as well as feelings of isolation and being very much alone. I
will talk more about all that is my next post.

Mischief Managed,

Sammy

Run of Hope Total: $1,835If we raise $2,500 by TOMORROW September 15th my team name, Sammy's Blobslayers will appear on this year's Run of Hope shirt! (We're only $660 away - we can do it!)